1. Field
A scroll compressor and an air conditioner including a scroll compressor are disclosed herein.
2. Background
An air conditioner is an electric home appliance that maintains indoor air in a state best fit to a use and purpose of the air. Such an air conditioner is an apparatus that cools or heats indoor air using a refrigerating cycle including a compressor, an outdoor heat-exchanger, an expansion valve, and an indoor heat-exchanger. That is, an air conditioner may include a cooler that cools the indoor air and a heater that heats the indoor air. An air conditioner may also be a two-way air conditioner that either heats or cools the indoor air. A compressor, which is a component of an air conditioner, is an apparatus that compresses refrigerant. There are piston-type compressors and scroll compressors.
The scroll compressor is a low-noise, high-efficiency compressor which is being widely used in the air conditioning equipment field. The scroll compressor uses a method in which a plurality of compression chambers are formed between two scrolls that rotate with respect to each other, the plurality of compression chambers continuously move toward a center decreasing their volume while refrigerant gas is continuously drawn in, compressed, and discharged.
To improve performance of a refrigerating cycle, a gas injection cycle may be used. A gas injection method injects into compression chambers gas-phase refrigerant that has a median pressure between a pressure of a refrigerant drawn into the scroll compressor and a pressure of a refrigerant discharged from the scroll compressor. There is also a method in which a plurality of injection passages are provided in a scroll compressor, and gas-phase refrigerant is supplied through each line into a plurality of compression chambers.
In a scroll compressor using a typical gas injection method, gas-phase refrigerant is injected into compression chambers using one injection hole. So a time during which the injection hole is open is short, and there is a limitation of reduction in injection efficiency due to a small amount of gas-phase refrigerant injected into the compression chambers.